Stanley Fish on Bush

Stanley Fish’s NY Times blog has an interesting post about Bush after leaving office and the rehabilitation of his image. If anything, its an thought provoking read.

Particularly, I like this little gem:

In addition, the road to rehabilitation will be shorter for [Bush] than it was for some of his predecessors. It took a while for Harry Truman’s feistiness to erase the memory of the 22 percent favorable rating he had at the end of his tenure…. Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan didn’t need rehabilitation; each would have won a third term easily and still could (even though Reagan is dead). (my italics)

That’s a nice bit about Clinton and especially Reagan.

Well, this is about as far into politics as I’m willing to go on this blog, so I’ll leave it at that.

Bush, Jr. will never be rehabilitated.
He fought the wrong, easier war, on purpose, to maintain his regime. He basically lost it anyway, although we can all hope for some measure of Iraqi democracy. He perfected Reagan’s “operate government sufficiently incompetently and maybe the people will defund it” philosophy, yet it appears the people want good government and are willing to pay for it. And at the height of his powers, he proposed handing social security to what we can now verify as a thoroughly corrupt financial “services” industry.

Meanwhile, Fish argues with $12/hour ATT employees about their English usage…